This was a question which came up at an EI (Emotional Intelligence) workshop I ran last week. Surprisingly, most people voted for controlling anger, frustration, annoyance and irritation with team members and managers in the workplace.

What is it that triggers these feelings and emotions? Some theorists propose that we need to ‘feel’ to control an emotion as responses are unconscious. An emotion being defined as a complex response to an environmental stimulus eg your manager!

EI is the ability to understand and manage our own emotions and awareness of the emotions of people around us. Popularised by Daniel Goleman’s study into Emotional Intelligence at work in the late 1990’s, led to EI being seen as more important than cognitive and technical competency combined.

It is recognised that we can nurture EI through developing skills and behaviours around the five EI competencies :

Self-Awareness;

Self-Regulation;

Self-Motivation;

Social Awareness-Empathy;

Social Skills

which takes practise, techniques and patience!

Other questions rose during the workshop:

What tactics do we employ to really develop EI more throughout teams and the workplace?

Do we need to become Stoics to truly regulate and manage our emotions?

There are many tactics that can be developed to encourage and develop EI amongst team members – starting with developing ‘trust’ and sharing emotions and feelings and being open to admitting weaknesses, as well as strengths. One of the key tactics is investing time to really get to know team members and their work drivers.

As for becoming a Stoic – if you are not aware what a Stoic really is – then you may be interested in this short YouTube clip from The School Of Life:

– quite enlightening. I’m not convinced this is a good idea!

How do you rate your own self-awareness?

How self-aware are you of your emotions and the impact on self and others?